Tag Archive | "iphone"

Thanks to Pam for the heads up about this new app in the app store, WorkSnug.

WorkSnug uses Augmented Reality to connect mobile workers to the nearest and best places to work in the city. We’ve visited and rated hundreds of workspaces, assessing noise levels, power provision, community feel, even the quality of the coffee. London has been launched first. San Francisco, New York, Berlin, Madrid and several other cities are on the way in the coming weeks

Covered recently in Web Worker Daily, check out the video to see the app in action.

I hate the idea of starting a new blog, I’m already running 5-6 now, but with the amount of iPhone stuff posted here lately I think I will have to – what does PHPkitchen have to do with the iPhone 😉

We launched our second app in the AppStore yesterday, My High Street, and today it’s #17 in the UK AppStore!! (in the Navigation category). We’re really happy with this amazing result, and not even sure how it happened, to be honest.

At last I received a sign from the folks at Apple that my application to the iPhone developer program was moving ahead!

I received confirmation of my original application a few days later on Feb 7th, 2009, then just today March 4th I got a phone call saying that I had been accepted. That was following a number of forms being filled, my company incorporation certificate being faxed over, and a few chasing emails. And a month of waiting! Somehow I thought it would be faster but reading around it seems about average these days.

But the whole process I’ve found suprisingly bumpy – there are many aspects that could be improved.

First you get an email titled Iphone Development Program Enrollment Status which invites you to click on a link leading to the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement. After that’s done you’re invited to pay $99 to sign up to the program, then you receive an email that invites you to look at your electronic download, which in fact turns out to be nothing you can download.

The trick, pointed out in the above-mentioned site, is you must then wait up to 24 hours, then you login to the Iphone Developer site, then in the top right corner you’ll see a link which indicates you can start the process of setting up your developer certificate.

One little email explaining the process would have been very welcome guys :-/

UPDATE: a full 24 hours later, I got the iPhone Developer Program Activation Code email, but even with this there was more funny business. You are invited to click on the link in the email to activate your account, then you are taken to a page that says, “check your email for a confirmation code that you need to paste into the form field below”.

That email never came, however the form field was pre-populated with a code that in my case worked.

It’s taken quite a while and a combination of apps but I finally have a really good sync setup between the iPhone and my contacts and calendar.

I use Google calendar as my primary calendar and this can be synced flawlessly with the iPhone calendar app using Google Mobile Sync – make sure to un-tick the Contacts option though. Even though Address Book has an option to sync all your contacts with Google contacts (from gmail) it does not store the full dataset nor the photos.

Before syncing your Address Book to the iPhone, I recommend you sync it to facebook using AddressBookSync. You not only get a lot of extra useful information from facebook on your contacts, you get their latest photo. Then using MobileMe (paid, unfortunately, but it’s the best service currently available) any changes to Address Book or iPhone contacts are synced almost instantly.

There are hacks, by the way, that claim to sync your iCal to Google calendar but I found the sync failed. Google Mobile Sync is the key. More info about it here. And I find Google Calendar still has much better usability (mainly the colouring) than iCal, bu that’s just my opinion.

The result is great – when someone calls, or your texting a friend, you get their latest photo and details, which is a nice touch. And when you’re out and about, all those meetings you arranged in Google calendar are at your fingertips, usually with a Google map to help you find them.

Been so busy lately I haven’t had much time to think about the wonderful new 3g iPhone, however reading the comments on Dave Troy’s blog got the ball rolling again 😉

I’m quite happy with the latest iPhone, but it certainly has quite a few problems. Most of the complaints I’ve bumped into on the web has been overhyped, but what I would consider real issues are as follows:

poor 3g reception

inability to recognise that a trusted wifi network won’t authenticate, and the need to manually “forget the network” in order to connect

instability of even core software: what’s up with address book, even after firmware update 2.0.2 it constantly freezes … am restarting the phone a lot to try and get around it

what’s up with the New York Times? I love this app but it’s a frequent crasher and mostly can’t retrieve data, even on wifi I get endless spinning wheels

inability to run programs in the background: if you can run music behind any program, why not any other program? I recently tried out http://www.instamapper.com and it’s great, but totally impractical as you can’t use the phone for anything else while it’s tracking ..

Two apps I’d love to see asap, not listed in aforementioned comments:

ability to use the iPhone as a 3g wifi router: free wifi connectivity outside your home/office in the UK is absolutely horrendous and I often find myself stuck because either Starbucks data rates are unreasonable or more likely because Joe Bloggs wifi service is out of order

verbose feedback for network activity: like the verbose output on an ssh connection. There’s so much wheel-spinning I think it would greatly relieve frustration to know what exact problem the iPhone is having connecting

loopt: I wrote those guys to see when their app would be released in the UK, no answer …

So what’s your great iPhone idea? Any interesting experiences to relate using PHP as a backend?

So Mac users can now take advantage of all the OS X integration features of iCal, and still have their data up to date in their Google Calendar account, which they probably obliged to use at work to share data with non-Mac colleagues. Two way synching is supported, so enter your event in either source and moments later the other one gets it. And maybe you have 10 or so Google calendars, no probs, you can add them all to iCal.

Great to hear this news as I was just on the edge of paying $25 for the un-named commercial product that also manages similar synchronisation.

And if you’re really keen you can setup a mobile me account, so any dates entered in your iPhone 3G also get synched to your iCal and Google calendars. I guess it won’t be long before your iPhone senses that it’s lunchtime, knows your location and schedule, and suggests a list of highly rated Indian restaurants in your area, knowing what cuisine you love 😉